In a message left for the Washington DC board of elections on 1 May, a caller expressed anger at the city for allowing non-US citizens to vote in local elections.
“Where the hell do you get off letting illegals vote?” the caller, who does not leave their name, said in a voicemail that the board of elections executive director, Monica Evans, played for the Guardian. “This is the nation’s capital. You are traitors. Traitors to your own country.”
The call came amid an effort by congressional Republicans to repeal DC’s law allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections and in the midst of intensive rhetoric on the right about the threat of non-citizens voting in federal elections. Evans said that since around early April, her office has been tracking numerous calls and messages with similar anger at the city.
“It’s a little disturbing when you get messages like that,” Evans said about the harassment, especially in a non-partisan office “when we show up and we do our job”.
DC’s law, passed in 2022, is in effect for the first time in DC’s primary on Tuesday. According to data as of Monday from the DC board of elections, 539 non-citizens have registered to vote this year.
In DC, non-citizens are given a different ballot from US citizens, which only includes local races like city council. Non-citizens are barred from voting in federal elections, and violations of the law are exceedingly rare. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans – including Trump and his allies, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and a network of far-right organizations – from adopting the issue as a central talking point when it comes to the threat of voter fraud this year in an attempt to stoke distrust in election results ahead of November.
Republicans often point to the more than a dozen left-leaning cities, mostly in Maryland, Vermont and California, where non-citizens can vote in local elections, as places where Democrats are opening the door for voter fraud to occur.
Last month, the House passed legislation for the second time to undo DC’s law allowing non-citizens to vote, but the effort is highly unlikely to move in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Republicans supporting the bill focused on the potential for non-citizens to also vote in federal elections, committing widespread voter fraud.
“Yesterday’s conspiracy is today’s reality,” said Representative Jeff Van Drew, a Republican from New Jersey.
Republicans have latched on to rhetoric around non-citizen voting this year as a way to play up fears of migrants flooding across the US border with Mexico, but the reality of immigration in DC looks different.
Shaghayegh Chris Rostampour, who first came to the US from Iran for graduate school in 2018, voted in their first US election last month when they cast an early ballot in DC. They have lived in DC since 2022 and work in arms control policy.
“I felt very empowered,” they said about voting, noting the importance for them to vote for candidates who will influence local issues that impact her day-to-day life, like rent prices and the roads they drive on. “I remember when I got my ballot in the mail and I saw the little I Voted sticker, it actually made me emotional.”
They described moving to the US with two suitcases as a student years ago, leaving their family and friends behind, and the constant feeling of being in transition, “like you don’t know where home is.
“This was kind of like a validation that this is my home,” they said. “I live here and I also have a say in what happens here.”
Voting advocates have expressed concerns that the Republican rhetoric about non-citizen voting will also serve as a scare tactic for immigrants, especially those who recently earned citizenship status, but might still fear prosecution if they cast a ballot.
Though it is legal in DC for non-citizens to vote, Rostampour, who recently applied for their green card, still checked with their immigration attorney before registering.
On the House floor last month, the DC non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton,joh raised concerns about Republicans passing the legislation so soon before the DC primary. “They did so to disrupt the election,” Norton said.
Johnson, the House speaker, said that if the bill does not succeed, “everybody watch very closely: it’s going to be proof positive that there are some Democrats who want illegal aliens deciding election outcomes,” according to the Washington Post.
The divisive nature of DC’s law was on display on Sunday, the last day of early voting, when someone wrote in colorful chalk outside a polling place in Georgetown, a wealthy neighborhood of DC: “VOTING NOT A RIGHT IS A PRIVILEGE OF CITIZEN.” Another chalk drawing attributed the message to “THE PROMISE KEEPER”, according to photos obtained from the Guardian.
The Republican rhetoric against non-citizen voting, inspired by Trump’s false claims of fraud in 2020, was an effort by the former president to blame others and not take accountability for his election loss, Rostampour said.
“In my language we have a phrase: When people try to scapegoat, they find the shortest wall,” they said. “And there’s no wall shorter than non-citizens.”
